Outside Voices: Ed Bark Says Network News Should Serve The Audience It Already Has
Whatever their dreams of audience expansion, the "CBS Evening News"
and its principal competitors keep running into two seemingly entrenched facts of life.
Three of the country's 10 largest TV markets, No. 3 Chicago, No. 6 Dallas-Fort Worth and No. 10 Houston, are in central time zones. For most people in the workaday world, that makes it nearly impossible to conquer rush hour traffic and make it home in time to watch Katie, Brian or Charles at 5:30 p.m.
So forget about getting the great majority of advertiser-craved 25-to-54-year-olds in central time cities. These millions of potential viewers are otherwise occupied at the appointed hour. And 6:30 p.m. Eastern time also can be a tough nut to crack.
This leads to the other hard truth. Whatever the time zone, who's actually home to watch the network newscasts? A lot of retirees are not only available, but receptive to sitting down for network news at the appointed hour. It's what they've been doing for much of their lives, either as children or as working-class parents in times when factory whistles blew at mid-afternoon. They didn't carry briefcases, they carried lunch pails home from work. And more often than not, their spouses were stay-at-home housewives.
Millions of autumnal baby-boomers now are joining this aging audience pool. My advice to all of the dinner-hour newscasts, but especially to the new Couric-anchored "Evening News," is to abandon any grand notions of "youthifying" your audience. Embrace what you have and give them an adult-strength dose of solid news without any artificial flavorings. We need it now more than ever.
This doesn't mean a newscast without innovations. It just means that most of the available core audience doesn't want a kids' meal. They like cute grandchildren but not anchors trying to be too cute.
Couric is still feeling her way on the "Evening News," but it's not too early to erase all traces of her morning show past. She's in an entirely different arena now. "Today" was yesterday, and its increasingly slap-happy approach is night-and-day different from what the "Evening News" should be.
Wednesday's edition ended with a good example of what Couric shouldn't be doing anymore. A nice feature on airplane pizza deliveries from Nome, Alaska, to out-of-the-way outposts prompted her to sign off by saying, "Ah, there's no place like Nome. I didn't write that."
Then don't say it.
Earlier in the newscast, Bob Schieffer's weekly commentary noted the huge good news boost Detroit has gotten from its American League champion Tigers baseball team.
Couric then immediately rained on him by telling viewers, "Bob's right. Sports can lift your spirits but they also can be dangerous." She then read a story about the banning of tag at some schools, but quipped that hopscotch is still allowed.
It would have been better to reverse these segments, giving Schieffer's the upper hand rather than letting the anchor be a kill-joy. Instead, one can imagine some viewers saying or thinking, "Aw, now why'd she have to do that to ol' Bob."
Couric also couldn't resist saying, "For the die-hard fans. Yikes."
It was her lead-in to a brief note on how caskets and urns now can be affixed with the deceased's favorite sports team logo. Frankly, anchors shouldn't say "Yikes."
These are relatively little things, but they add up to create overall impressions. Like it or not, older audiences are going to be the lifeblood of all three network newscasts. Couric is talking directly to them, not bantering with Matt Lauer anymore.
One more thing: Network sales departments should make all-out efforts to convince Madison Avenue that America's senior citizens are capable of much more than medicating themselves until death. Again, though, Wednesday's "Evening News" -- and it's no different from the others
-- was heavily medicated with commercials tied to cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, sleep disorders, osteoporosis and sparkling dentures.
Believe it or not, today's grandparents actually are known to go out to dinner, drive cars, even shop at a certain clothing store that rhymes with rap. So the adjoining ads could use a little juice while the newscasts themselves remain steadfastly true to their time-honored missions. It seems like a good mix to me.